A Dentist's Job: Ghost Town Ricky Gervais sees dead people. And they bring him to life
It takes a good while for Ricky Gervais to warm up; it takes even longer for the audience to warm to Ricky Gervais. During the opening minutes of...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: September 18, 2008
Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace Racial tension, above and below the surface
Earlier this year, when I found myself assigned to jury duty on a drug-related trial at the Los Angeles Superior Court, our jury foreman turned...
More>>By Scott Foundas
Published: September 18, 2008
Oh, Canada Midway through the Toronto film fest, and things are looking bleak
If this year's Toronto International Film Festival had a subtitle, it could be "When Good Directors Go Bad." At least that's what it has felt...
More>>By Scott Foundas
Published: September 11, 2008
Intolerable Cruelty: Burn After Reading Remarkably consistent, the Coens make another mockery
Masters of the carefully crafted cheap shot, Joel and Ethan Coen have built a career on flippancy. Given their refusal to take anything seriously...
More>>By J. Hoberman
Published: September 11, 2008
Ladies Light in The Women Once grand, this story is now just another chick flick
"What do you think this is?" cries a lady who lunches in Diane English's remake of George Cukor's The Women. "Some kind of '30s movie?"
Even...
More>>By Ella Taylor
Published: September 11, 2008
About Boy A What happens when a child murderer grows up?
So fuckin' delicate, people...they die so easily," says a supporting character to the titular Boy A, whose barely audible two-word reply...
More>>By Ernest Hardy
Published: September 04, 2008
The Edge of Heaven Can Wait Storylines and cultures crash in this German/Turkish import — and isn't it arty?
The Edge of Heaven disembarks stateside still flush from an award-reaping Eurasian tour. That the European Film Awards tossed Fatih Akin's...
More>>By Nick Pinkerton
Published: August 28, 2008
Hard-Knock Life in Frozen River This movie may lay it on a bit thick, but Melissa Leo nails the role of a struggling single mom
When I heard that Quentin Tarantino handed the Grand Jury Prize for best feature to Courtney Hunt's Frozen River at this year's Sundance Film...
More>>By Ella Taylor
Published: August 21, 2008
Not to Be: Hamlet 2 Full of itself and not half as funny as it thinks it is, this movie is simply tragic
In its final ten minutes, Hamlet 2 is little more than chaos, noise and nonsense, and those are ten perfectly enjoyable minutes. It's hard to...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: August 21, 2008
Schoolhouse: The Rocker Rainn Wilson comedy is more childish pop than hardcore funny
The Rocker bears the decidedly unmistakable odor of something made in 1983 and left on the shelf a good 25 years. Which isn't to suggest that...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: August 21, 2008
Apocalypse Whatever: Tropic Thunder Ben Stiller's Hollywood send-up lacks firepower
Early buzz out of Hollywood pegged Tropic Thunder, directed and co-written by star Ben Stiller, as the end-all and be-all of movie-biz parodies...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: August 14, 2008
Mighty Aphrodites in Vicky Cristina Barcelona Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson join forces — and some other stuff — in Woody Allen's (winning!) latest
Perhaps this review should begin with a disclaimer: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen's 39th film as writer-director, will do little to...
More>>By Scott Foundas
Published: August 14, 2008
Army of One in Alexandra A Russian grandmother visits the troops, and brings light to their misguided mission in Chechnya
Spare yet tactile, a mysterious mixture of lightness and gravity, Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra is founded on contradiction. Musing on war in...
More>>By J. Hoberman
Published: August 14, 2008
Towering Cinema in Man on Wire Philippe Petit's World Trade Center tightrope walk was made for the movies
Even as the first girders were laid in the mid-1960s, something about the World Trade Center — that twin-pronged erection jutting from the...
More>>By Jim Ridley
Published: August 14, 2008
Send It Back: Bottle Shock's Corked Not Quite Ripe
Bottle Shock, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is a great concept populated by great actors that works hard to make its...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: August 07, 2008
Brideshead Revisited Goes Back to the Book The movie is shorter and truer to the novel than the TV mini-series
Making notes in 1949 for a review of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, George Orwell wrote that "Waugh is about as good a novelist as one can...
More>>By Ella Taylor
Published: July 31, 2008
Men Will Be Boys in Step Brothers Ferrell, Reilly, McKay & Co. still don't wanna grow up. And thank God for that
I haven't seen much at the movies in the past two years that has given me as much unbridled comic pleasure as the sight of Will Ferrell as the...
More>>By Scott Foundas
Published: July 24, 2008
Heart of Darkness: The Dark Knight Heath Ledger peers into the void as Christopher Nolan's Batman returns
What a brooding pleasure it is to return to Christopher Nolan's Gotham City — if "pleasure" is the right word for a movie that gazes so...
More>>By Scott Foundas
Published: July 17, 2008
Mamma Mia! drains the fun out of ABBA Thank you for the music, but your movie's kinda drab.
I've always enjoyed ABBA — not in that post-hoc, so-bad-it's good hip way, but innocently, the way I like Phil Spector. To this day,...
More>>By Ella Taylor
Published: July 17, 2008
Logic Goes Out with the Intrigue in Ho-Hum "Thriller" Traitor 
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired Argues the Case... 
Rogen and Franco, on the Run and Madly in Love in Pineapple Express 
High-School Heroes and Zeros Roam the Halls of Nanette Burstein's "documentary" American Teen 
Provocateurs Catherine Breillat and Asia Argento Put Their Stamp (or tattoo) on 19th-Century France 
Werner Herzog Treks to Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World 
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